Article ID: CBB001214429

Voluntarism in Early Psychology: The Case of Hermann von Helmholtz (2014)

unapi

The failure to recognize the programmatic similarity between (post-)Kantian German philosophy and early psychology has impoverished psychology's historical self-understanding to a great extent. This article aims to contribute to recent efforts to overcome the gaps in the historiography of contemporary psychology, which are the result of an empiricist bias. To this end, we present an analysis of the way in which Hermann von Helmholtz's theory of perception resonates with Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Ego-doctrine. It will be argued that this indebtedness is particularly clear when focusing on the foundation of the differential awareness of subject and object in perception. In doing so, the widespread reception of Helmholtz's work as proto-positivist or strictly empiricist is challenged, in favor of the claim that important elements of his theorizing can only be understood properly against the background of Fichte's Ego-doctrine. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)

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Authors & Contributors
Hatfield, Gary Carl
Woodward, Ben
Longo, Anna
Bilger, Paul Rudolf
Tolman, Charles W.
Steigerwald, Joan
Concepts
Philosophy
Psychology
Science
Social sciences
Geometry
Imagination
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
Places
Germany
France
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